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There were no longer any magistrates in Rome. The great palaces of the patricians stood deserted, exposed to the unfaithful guardianship of freedmen and slaves. The bankers' booths were closed, the shops did not raise their shutters. On the streets swarmed the irresponsible and the vicious.
This being proclaimed, forthwith whoever had contributed to promote sedition by word or deed, more particularly men who had been tribunes, began to solicit support and to bustle about the forum as candidates; so that despair, in the first instance, of obtaining the honour, by reason of the irritated state of the people's mind, then indignation at having to hold the office with such persons, deterred the patricians; at length however, being forced, they stood as candidates, lest they might appear to have relinquished all share in the government.
It was on the dignity of the senate that Augustus and his successors founded their new empire; and they affected, on every occasion, to adopt the language and principles of Patricians. In the administration of their own powers, they frequently consulted the great national council, and seemed to refer to its decision the most important concerns of peace and war.
Wherefore in Lacedaemon where there was, and in Venice where there is, nothing else for which they should assume it, they have never shown so much as an inclination to it. Whereupon the patricians, or nobility, began to let out the hitherto dissembled venom which is inherent in the root of oligarchy and fell immediately upon injuring the people beyond all moderation.
But he concluded a league with the Latins, and also with the Hernicians—a Sabine people, who dwelt in one of the valleys of the Appenines, by which the power of Rome was threatened. He is also known as the first who proposed an agrarian law. It seems that the patricians had occupied the public lands to the exclusion of the plebeians.
It was more social than territorial, and tended to limit the power of the Crown, and to increase that of the barons. The Plantagenets had not begun to call Commons to the House of Lords. The issue of writs was confined to those who were barons-by-tenure, the PATRICIANS of the Norman period. The creation of NOBLES was the invention of a later age.
This spirit of moderation shown by the tribune relieved the fears of the patricians, but it also intensified their resentment against the consuls, for they seemed to be so wholly devoted to the plebs, that the safety and liberty of the patricians were a matter of more immediate concern to the plebeian than they were to the patrician magistrates.
But, in the year 367 B.C., the tribunes Licinius and L. Sextius secured the passage of three memorable laws in the Curiata Tributa—the abolition of the military tribunate, which had increased the power of the patricians, and the restoration of the consulate, on the condition that one of the consuls should be a plebeian; the second, that no citizen should possess more than five hundred jugera of the public lands; and the third, that all interest thus paid on loans should be deducted from the principal.
That this evil, a long time retarded, partly by the wise measures of the patricians, partly by the forbearance of the commons, had now proceeded to extremities. That two states were now formed out of one: that each party had its own magistrates, its own laws.
Our Romans, emulating his example, and translating his terms, entitled those whom he had called Elders, Senators, which, as we have said, was done by Romulus in reference to the elect patricians. In this constitution, however, the power, the influence, and name of the king is still pre-eminent.
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